State of new media management
The dashboard main branch (deployed on dashboard.aura.radio) now contains the new playlist (media source) and file management feature. The old media page is still there. I’ve refrained from removing it, so that it can serve as a reference to compare the behaviors of the existing and the new solution. If everything works out, I’ll remove it next week (or sooner, if everyone’s happy).
The only thing missing is the media source editor on the show level. The existing show playlist assignment dialog is now obsolete and arguably broken.
A few open questions:
- Should the show description (note) editor and the media sources editor be on the same page or should we split them up into separate pages?
- Are there any remarks or issues with the designation of the media source status in the timeslot overview?
- In case a playlist contains exactly one entry of unknown duration: should we display the calculated duration instead of Unknown duration?
- Are we happy with the expert mode? If not, what should be changed?
Designs
- #3241.0-alpha6 — Wondrous Whale 🐳
Activity
- changed milestone to %1.0-alpha3 — Playful Platypus
changed milestone to %1.0-alpha3 — Playful Platypus
This looks really good, already! I think it's a good choice, that you've kept the old media managment for now. Especially, the media management will be deeper reworked with alpha-4 (compare the roadmap).
To your questions:
- For now we should keep it in one place. For ease of use and less fragmentation.
- The status info feels helpful. Maybe when something is assigned, display the channel type or name, instead of "Perfect"? In case of an audio file it could be "File" or a truncated file name, in case of a stream it could be "Stream" or the truncated stream name and in case of line-in it's helpful if it show the studio name, like "Studio 1", "Live Studio" etc. If there are media source of multiple types it could be someting like "Various Sources".
- For stream and line - yes, display the calculated duration i.e. the duration of the timeslot. For file entries the actual duration of the file.
- That focus for alpha-4 and exceeds the possibilities of this development cycle. There might be also small changes for the "easy mode" scheduled for alpha-4. So there there is no need to have everything perfect in this area yet.
Something else to think about: Currently the assigned media sources are only derived from the timeslot. There are also inherited, valid sources from schedule and show level (maybe even station level). Just for consideration. So these can and should be respected when displaying the status. There is also some request to chain different levels of sources, when the duration doesn't match. More to come in upcoming design meetings.
@fm_margarethem please extend if I'm missing something.
Edited by David Trattnig
I think it's a good choice, that you've kept the old media managment for now.
To be clear: I’ve only kept it to act as a reference for comparison. The large-scale refactorings of other features had some unintended side-effects where I removed behavior that was intended but implicit or non-obvious. I wanted to give you or other testers the chance to check how things used to work so it may guide testing. But in the end I still plan to remove the media page fairly soon. If next week is too soon, feel free to say so, but I don’t think the old media management should be part of the final alpha.3 release.
Hello! Some thoughts and observations after a round of testing:
- Having the media management and episode editor on one page feels comfortable in terms of creating one smooth workflow.
- Regarding the media status indicator, instead of "missing" / "Perfect" it would be more helpful to indicate the type of content (like @david mentioned, can be "file" / "stream" / "live"). This gives helpful info for the users. The duration is already written next to it, so I see if my file is not long enough
- yes, if we have an playlist item with unknown duration, the duration of the timeslot should be calculated and shown. By the way, importing a file from URL always leads to "unknown duration" even if I insert an URL to an audio file that has an exact length - is this intended? does the import fail? for a user, this is not clear right now.
- From first look, as it appears now the expert mode is already present with the UI in first place, no? because during or after upload of one file I can already upload another file. (Our idea of the expert mode was that the simple mode UI only allows to upload one file per timeslot, while the expert mode allows for multiple uploads to create more detailed playlists). From that view, to a user it is not really clear what the "expert mode" is. We can discuss how to clarify this in our meeting next week.
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If next week is too soon, feel free to say so, but I don’t think the old media management should be part of the final alpha.3 release.
I'm not so sure about that suggestion, because the current media section is still required for reference when planning for alpha-4. So I'd vote to keep it for now. While I appreciate your choice to build lots of media-related functions, this is not the intent of alpha-3.
I agree with @fm_margarethem currently it's not clear what the expert mode is. Especially if you want to remove the current expert mode. What's left is the simple mode, where you can add additional entries. That would mean we don't need that bold term at all.
Let's talk personally to avoid any confusion.
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Playlist status/source labels
Exchanging "Perfect" for the type of media sources that are assigned to the slot seems logical for me.
The duration is already written next to it, so I see if my file is not long enough.
Nope. The duration shown in the timeslot overview is that of the timeslot (basically:
end - start), not the duration of the content of the playlist. You’ve specified no intent in the sentence, but for me it reads like dont show warning labels for too short/too long playlist content. Given that there is no other info on the actual content length these labels feel necessary.Regarding the media status indicator, instead of "missing" [...] it would be more helpful to indicate the type of content
I can’t display the type of content for missing content :). Missing feels appropriate here.
Tank import
By the way, importing a file from URL always leads to "unknown duration" even if I insert an URL to an audio file that has an exact length - is this intended? does the import fail? for a user, this is not clear right now.
The dashboard does no work do determine the duration of audio files. This is entirely tank. If you’ve found a file for which the duration is not properly determined you might want to create an issue in tank and attach that file.
I’ve imported a file by URL and see no issues.
Displaying computed duration for unknown duration
This is mostly fine with me (hence why I’ve suggested it) with a small caveat. If users assign a second media source that does not have an inherent duration (stream, line) tank prevents them from doing so because it only allows one entry of unknown duration in the playlist. The dashboard keeps track of non-added entries and displays them along with an error message. In that specific case the existing entry with unknown duration must be recognizable. I guess my solution would be a small calculator icon next to the calculated duration and a yellowish-background to indicate that something is special about that duration. If you have other thoughts, let me know.
Expert mode
From first look, as it appears now the expert mode is already present with the UI in first place, no? because during or after upload of one file I can already upload another file. (Our idea of the expert mode was that the simple mode UI only allows to upload one file per timeslot, while the expert mode allows for multiple uploads to create more detailed playlists). From that view, to a user it is not really clear what the "expert mode" is.
I’m not sure how you’ve come to this conclusion. If there are no media sources assigned yet and you upload just one file the media-source-assignment/uploader-field is hidden afterwards. You then have to enable expert mode to add more sources. If the playlist already has multiple entries, expert mode is force-enabled.
I agree with @fm_margarethem currently it's not clear what the expert mode is. Especially if you want to remove the current expert mode. What's left is the simple mode, where you can add additional entries. That would mean we don't need that bold term at all.
That, I agree with :). It sure feels bold to call it expert mode. I’d say we could remove it, but I’ve only implemented it because we’ve agreed that single-entry would be the default. So… do we rename it?
State of old media management
I'm not so sure about that suggestion, because the current media section is still required for reference when planning for alpha-4. So I'd vote to keep it for now. While I appreciate your choice to build lots of media-related functions, this is not the intent of alpha-3.
The problem is, that the media management in the show area operates on Pinia stores, whereas the old media management operates on the deprecated Vuex stores. These stores don’t sync and I don’t plan on implementing that. This might cause weird behaviors. If we keep the media management in the final alpha.3 release I suspect that you might get bug reports for that or at least some confused testers.
If you really want to keep it I suggest that we at least hide the navigation entry and only make it accessible by entering the route manually.
Edited by Konrad Mohrfeldt -
Dashboard Meeting 2023-11-15 (@fm_margarethem @kmohrf @david):
- Playlist status/source labels: Display channel assignment instead of "perfect".
- Expert Mode: for alpha-3 we keep it as it is. More work in this area for alpha-4.
- Displaying computed duration for unknown duration: Display when some duration is calculated, also indicate the duration changable.
- Timeslot List: The displayed duration is the timeslot length. Suggestion: 0:57/1:00 actual time vs timeslot duration. Is it clear enough? Maybe tooltip/mouse over + color coding (green/orange/red) can support understanding? When the duration is too long - red. when it's too short, no special handling atm.
- State of old media management: remove, because of weird behavior expected.
mentioned in issue #150 (moved)
added P3 label
assigned to @kmohrf
removed discuss label
- changed milestone to %1.0-alpha5 — Capable Capybara
changed milestone to %1.0-alpha5 — Capable Capybara
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Old media management has been removed in dfbd4174. Remaining tasks are postponed to alpha.4.
- changed milestone to %1.0-alpha6 — Wondrous Whale
changed milestone to %1.0-alpha6 — Wondrous Whale
removed To Do label
added P2 discuss requires-refinement labels and removed P3 label
mentioned in issue #294 (closed)
marked this issue as related to #294 (closed)
mentioned in issue aura#390 (closed)
added Cycle [6/24] label
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Open questions to be solved as part of:
mentioned in issue #285 (closed)
marked this issue as related to #324 (closed)
mentioned in issue #324 (closed)
marked this issue as related to aura#390 (closed)
removed discuss label
removed requires-refinement label